The University of Liverpool School of Veterinary Science was the first veterinary school in the United Kingdom to be incorporated into a University. The school's teaching, treatment and research facilities on the main campus and at Leahurst on the Wirral Peninsula, approximately 12 miles outside Liverpool, are amongst the most advanced and innovative in the country. The foundations for the vet school at Liverpool were laid in the early 1900s when William Owen Williams, principal of the now-defunct New Veterinary College in Edinburgh (not to be confused with the Royal (Dick) Vet School, with which it was in competition), was invited to transfer his institution to Liverpool. The emerging science of veterinary medicine was of particular relevance both to the busy port city itself, which depended upon heavy horses to drive its docks and associated industry, and to the economy of the surrounding countryside, which at the time boasted the highest stocking density of cattle in the UK.